From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2012 00:23:16 -0400

The route to green open access is not cost free.  Maybe reviewers are
not paid but the whole peer review process has to be managed, with
editors and staff paid to run it and that has costs associated with
it.

While subscriptions are paying the cost of publication, Green OA is
free. If/when universally mandated Green OA makes subscriptions
unsustainable, then (and only then) journals can convert to (post-Green)
Gold OA, paid for, per paper, out of the institutional windfall subscription
cancelation savings.

Harnad, S. (2007) The Green Road to Open Access: A Leveraged Transition.
In: Anna Gacs (ed). The Culture of Periodicals from the Perspective of
the Electronic Age. L'Harmattan. 99-106.

Harnad, S. (2009) The PostGutenberg Open Access Journal.
In: Cope, B. & Phillips, A (Eds.) The Future of the Academic
Journal. Chandos.

Harnad, S. (2010) No-Fault Peer Review Charges:
The Price of Selectivity Need Not Be Access Denied or Delayed.
D-Lib Magazine 16 (7/8).

Harnad, S. (2011) Gold Open Access Publishing Must Not Be
Allowed to Retard the Progress of Green Open Access Self-Archiving.
Logos: The Journal of the World Book Community. 21(3-4): 86-93

Stevan Harnad

From: Stella Dutton <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2012 08:24:22 +0100

I've watched the exchange of comments over the Finch report and the
recent announcement  by the UK government on Open Access, and by the
way the BMJ was one of the first journals back in the late 1990s to
make its research papers open access.  I'd like to correct an error in
a number of the postings and  if it seems an obvious comment then I
apologise but  clearly it needs restating.

The route to green open access is not cost free.  Maybe reviewers are
not paid but the whole peer review process has to be managed, with
editors and staff paid to run it and that has costs associated with
it.   By the way, most of our journals reject over 70-80% of the
papers received with the BMJ rejecting over 95%.

Stella Dutton
Chief Executive Officer
BMJ Publishing Group Limited
BMA House
Tavistock Square
London  WC1H 9JR

________________________________

From: Frederick Friend <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2012 12:12:38 +0100

I cannot let pass without challenge the STM Association's statement
that "Green Open Access has no business model to support the
publications on which it crucially depends". Firstly deposit of a
research report by an author in an institutional or subject repository
does not depend upon publication in a journal. It is a separate route
to the dissemination of publicly-funded research and could operate
world-wide whether or not any STM journals were published at all.
Secondly green open access does have a business model which is
entirely within research and higher education budgets. Repositories
are supported by their institution or funding agency, and a fully
peer-reviewed version of a research article could be supplied on open
access using the time of reviewers currently supplied without charge
to publishers.

A further quality stamp could be provided by the institution or
organization funding the repository and appropriate metadata attached
to the version to indicate that it could be regarded as a "version of
record". Few people are currently advocating a total switch away from
publishing in journals to a total reliance upon repositories (although
it would be feasible), but as both the European Commission and
Research Councils UK acknowledge in their policies the two models can
live alongside one another. The UK Government, in accepting the
unbalanced recommendations from the Finch Group, has made a decision
which is bad for researchers and bad for taxpayers. It may not even be
good for publishers in the long-term, once the full implications of
the UK Government's decision are worked through.

Fred Friend
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk